Hired Guns 2 Iso Beta Leaked!

While looking through the net I happened to have noticed a full iso download for the unreleased sequel to Psygnosis's 1994 classic game Hired Guns. It uses the unreal engine and is the final build before it got cancelled, apparently because Psygnosis could not find a publisher for it. It was leaked by a graphics artist about a month ago.

Here is a picture of the game in action (hope the upload worked). It works on xp, at least on my computer. This pre-release build is from the year 2000. If the game does not work on your pc, here are some tips someone wrote to help you:

Part 1 for people who don't want to go into file modifications :

I'm not sure if this has an impact on the actual resolution but :
Go to the options control panel, gameplay, advanced options (bottom). You then go in windowed mode.
You can move the window to see the whole advanced options available if you want to check them.
Anyway, in the game window you now have a top menu bar : file, window and help. In the windows drop-down menu you have various modes to select.

Also for people configuring the keys, be patient, it takes a few seconds after hitting Enter for the game to allow you to take the new input.

Part 2 for people who are ready to make file modifications (and already have done with UT99 or 2004, since as far as I remember, HG3D is based on a UT engine) (needs a lot of further testing and feedback is welcome):

I think everything is in hg.ini (system folder).
You can change your input keys easily there.

As for the resolution :
[WinDrv.WindowsClient]
I changed the original settings 640*480 to :
ViewportX=1280
ViewportY=800 (widescreen laptop explains the unsual resolution)
I don't feel an actual change on graphics but the game now plays at a decent rate (before I found it played too quickly, you could be shot to death before seeing where the enemy was)

I switched ScreenFlashes to False because I think it changes the flickering that sometimes happens in the select screen at the beginning.

"Hired Guns is a futuristic, first-person 3D shooter set in a slick, neon-washed cyberpunk world. It combines all-out first-person shooter action with intense strategic gameplay. The game's quad-screen view enables players to simultaneously command and view a four-character squad of ruthless mercenaries. Team play is key as each player faces a relentless onslaught of action while leading three other mercs to victory. Hired Guns features the acclaimed Unreal engine and supports cooperative multiplayer play via a LAN."

1) after install, go to the /System/ dir and run hg.exe to get it to run, the HGStart.exe crash n burned on xp here - Jurai

2) If it doesnt seem to run the video setup (atleast it didnt for me), you can change the video driver in the ini, though d3d didnt render any menu overlays for me in fs (software did) - Juari

Check my other tips at the top of the page. People definitely got this to work. Maybe its more to do with the original unreal engine not working properly great on xp? I'll look into it if its still failing...

Edit: I think we should definitely revive gamebeta.wiki since its down at the moment, and it looked quite good. Perhaps '1337 Beta Collector' can help?

It uses the unreal engine and is the final build before it got cancelled, apparently because Psygnosis could not find a publisher for it.

Psygnosis was the publisher. The story is actually that Psygnosis decided to stop making PC games in April 2000. The developers (VR-1 at that time, initially Devil's Thumb Entertainment) wanted to finish the game nevertheless, but since Psygnosis refused to part with the rights on the game, it wasn't possible. They gave up sometime in 2001... Really a shame, as the game wasn't that bad.

That leaked version is the last one compiled; however, it's by no means final. All single-player maps are there, but the missions aren't connected to each other. That's why you can select whatever mission you want to play from the outset.

This is not the UT Engine. If it wasn't for a few projectiles, nothing looks like it was made on Unreal Engine, except that it looks a bit like Emissary looked like in 1996. Now why is that?

We all know that this company was an off-shoot from DMA. DMA had one of the earliest unreal engine licenses and they developed a fully-working nintendo 64 DD port of Unreal that was scrapped only thanks to the failure of the platform and it only being released in japan....

They had worked with and modified the engine since 1996..at the time when it was still even using Additive geometry and backgrounds not unsimilar to Metroid Prime.

And this is where the big reveal comes from. The modified version of the Unreal Engine (it's only really based off the Unreal initial release, for licensing/legal reasons) that Hired Guns use is the base for the Metroid Prime Hunters game on the DS....

This might sound like a big claim, but look at the evidence...retro never said the engine they used for the "adventure shooter" game was entirely their own, given the nintendo 64 link etc etc it's clear they used the unreal warfare engine as early as they could and modified it to their ends....

Now they also had acess to the earliest engines which they took part in and possibly the whole dma derived versions of the engine...

MP:H has references to movers and all kind of unreal engine-only stuff at the time. In fact I noticed some particular similarities and I had a contact in the company that I talked to.

However he stopped all conversation when I revealed I knew of the link to the Unreal engine. He ceased all conversation and made sure I wasn't continuing pursuing this...

We all know how secretive nintendo is, given they cancelled a good metroid game just because the company who was hiring people told them upfront what they were getting hired for and it was meant to be kept a secret....

This is something for a big news. I know there are people who disproved or seemed to disprove the unreal engine theory behind Metroid Prime, but they know nothing about the Unreal Engine, they don't even know it's possible to have additive world geometry in the original Unreal and that this feature was merely "disabled" to begin with and it was what the game started on, including the same kind of skies that the MP games featured...

They didn't observe fluidsurfaceinfos and how exact it is in the original metroid prime release (I'm saying this because the Wii releases had this and other stuff obscured to a reason thanks to a higher resolution and it being more noticable it is Unreal Engine) compared to Unreal 2 and Unreal 2 XMP even and that the way the rooms unload/disapear from view is exactly same how Anti-Portals work on Unreal Engine 2.

Just compare: Go to the secret worlds in phendrana drifts and shoot the water surface/look at it from the outside while being outside the geometry and then look say at the similar thing in Unreal 2 in the third Sanctuary level and ghost out at the first lake pool and walk down there. You'll notice the zoning/fog and the way the fluid surface looks from the outside is exactly the same way like in Metroid Prime when you go outside in what the metroid fans keep calling "secret worlds". Those "secret worlds" are commonly known glitch that is abused in network games in Unreal 2 XMP very often to say the least...

It all comes to the observation plus the fact that a guy once managed to look at the actual code of the game, not the outside scripts but what is deeper in and found similarities to the UnrealScript, though I have reasons to belive that UnrealScript as such was stripped out from the game just as has happened to some other unreleased Unreal Engine license which at least admitted to it.....

It is out there on one website I am not sure linking is allowed to...but more mirrors should be an option, I'll pm it to you. I'd like someone to up it to BA FTP too.EDIT: Apparently that's been done too, except I didn't fully check that lately...